Month: September 2014

Three of my very favourites all on one pizza. Mmm… We also added some of the usual grated hard mozzarella cheese and it worked great with the feta.

We are just over half way through this little pizza project. I love looking back at all the combinations of topping we have tried so far it really does make you think about flavours and what works and what doesn’t. Actually I have to admit that most veg seems to go well together.

There is a beautiful indulgence in simply picking everything and putting it all together, like I am allowing myself to be that bit crazy!

There is just about every flower I have grown this year in this arrangement. Calendula, cosmos, helianthus, nicotiana, saliva, lathyrus, matthiola, centaurea and a few clematis stems. Phew.

It is getting down to the end of it all for this summer now. Which I am sad about. Not just loosing the summer but the creativity of making arrangements. For twenty six weeks or thereabouts I arranged flowers every week.

It has been a wonderfully successful flower growing year and I think I can cross one of my entries of the list! What do you think? (Number 49 -grow enough flowers to have them in the house all summer long.)

Hopefully I’ll get a couple more weeks picking yet and then I’m looking forward to doing a round up post with all my thoughts about this summers flowers, the amazing blogs of flower growers I’ve found this summer and of course plans for next year.

If the weather is good for you go out right now and enjoy those flowers. x

(I just popped back to the post about the second book to check what I thought about it. I laughed out loud at my little rant about the cover. I stand by those feelings but have to admit I adore the dress on this cover and love how the blue background matched my nails!)

Not much to say about the final installment of this story, it did the same as the other two books. Enjoyable and I’m glad I know how it ends but it didn’t set my world on fire.

We stumbled upon this post box when we took a wrong turn on our recent Scarborough adventure. We were looking for a convenient place to turn the car around when I spotted an insignia I hadn’t seen before. I asked Gav to pull over in a calm and clear voice, ahem…. And hopped out of the car to snap a photo or two.

This one is another VR for Queen Victoria. In my quest to find as many different post boxes as possible I had only seen the VR on two wall boxes so far, so finding this traditional free standing box was a great addition to the collection.

Oh, the light, the failing light! I am going to have to either set up the tripod (boo) or make Gav have pizza for lunch if I am to keep up with these posts through the winter, lol.

Anyway here we are with number sixteen. This one was a couple of weeks ago and I had forgotten all about it. It had the very first of our home grown tomatoes and french beans as well as courgettes, green olives, artichokes and mushrooms. The multiple layers of flavours was really good.

Two photo of my feet this week! I noticed that I have taken to wandering around at work with glasses in hand so I thought I better capture the fact that I have given in and need to wear them to read everything these days….

Our electric kettle broke so we dug out the camping one. There is something so comforting about a kettle on the stove.

Throughout the summer we have had a couple of gluts of courgettes. Because we are vegetarian I can always use them up and I’ve been picking consistently to get fairly small ones, that way they keep coming and are more tasty.

I had about six in the fridge and found this recipe on the Good Food website. Since I had a tub of ricotta in the fridge I dived in and made this lasagne.

I used the last of Gav’s tomato sauces from the freezer instead of the jar mentioned in the recipe.

And I pulled the food processor out from the depths of the cupboard to grate the veg then added it to the onions.

Gentle stirring was required as my pan was a bit small but they soon reduced down.

As the recipe indicated I added the cheese to the courgettes, seasoning and started layering.

I think because the cooking time in the oven is not as long as usual for a lasagne, the recipe requires the partial cooking of the pasta. Whenever I’ve done that in the past they always stick together and they did just that again but I managed to peel them apart. I also noticed that the sheets stretched when cooking. Usually one sheet of pasta just fits width ways in the dish above but as you can see it was a bit bigger.

After the pasta the sauce.

Then repeat the layers once more and add the rest of the ricotta in dollops.

Just fifteen minutes later…

A new summer favourite I think. And using up courgettes too. Excellent.